HALLUCIDATE-4EVR: John Calvin was an advocate of singing.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

John Calvin was an advocate of singing.

Are you a church-man? Or, perhaps I should ask, are you a church-person? If you are, there should be no doubt in your mind what the role of singing is. By that, I mean congregational singing.

I was just thumbing-through a small collection, aptly named, Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs. It is published by Founder’s Press, and is edited by Joe B. Nesom. It's interesting to note that the first song in the sixty-three song collection is And Can It Be, which was written by Charles Wesley – he, along with his brother John, of the decidedly non-calvinistic ‘persuasion’. This song, however, has to be his most glorious contribution to the extollation (is that a word?) of the honor and glory of God, from among his hundreds of compositions. It would appear that he may have been almost unaware of what he was doing, in that the song appropriately serves to dispense with otherwise flawed perceptions of God, and resoundingly ascribes a glaringly Calvinistic perspective. That’s fine and dandy – no doubt, if, in heaven, one is able to recall his finest earthly achievements, Charles Wesley is lustily singing And Can It Be, albeit with appropriate revisions to reflect his own transition from the mortality of this present earth to the eternal realities of heaven.

Oh, yes, that is absolutely one of my favorite hymns.

Anyway, my primary purpose for this post is to cite a short footnote from the book. The citation is from John Calvin’s Preface to the Genevan Psalter (1543):

The use of singing may be extended further: it is even in the houses and fields an incentive for us, like an organ, to praise God and to lift our hearts to Him, for consoling us in meditating upon His virtue, goodness, wisdom and justice, which is more necessary than can be expressed… Among all other things which are proper for recreation of man and for giving him pleasure, music is one of the first or one of the principal and we must esteem it as a gift of God given to us for that purpose.